1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system and method for assessing the load of electrical commercial products on the environment, and particularly relates to a system and method for assessing the load on the environment of circuit boards carrying electrical commercial products.
2. Description of the Related Art
The lifecycle of a commercial product from manufacture to disposal may be divided into a series of phases such as the mining and transportation of raw materials, refining of materials, manufacturing of components, the manufacturing and transportation of the product, the use, recycling, and disposal of the product. The term “lifecycle assessment” refers to the quantitative assessment of the load on the environment that takes into account all the factors relating to the consumption of energy and natural resources and the type and quantity of waste materials associated with each of the phases. As the examples of the art relating to the lifecycle assessment, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 7-311760 discloses a method of assessing the environmental load, and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-553 discloses a method and apparatus for assessing the environmental load.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 10-198719 discloses a method and apparatus for assessing the environmental load that generates a database in advance by identifying the relationships between the type and size of components and the environmental load of these components. Such a database is expected to reduce time and labor associated with the assessment of the environmental load of a circuit board on which circuit components are mounted. In actuality, however, it is generally unknown what components are actually implemented on the circuit board at the time of manufacturing even if the circuit components were definitely known at the time of design. Because of this, components implemented on each circuit board need to be identified through visual inspection or through document checks. The type and quantity of components manually identified in this manner are then used for the assessment of environmental load.
Such manual labor may require removing soldered components from the circuit board for inspection and size measurement so as to evaluate the type and size of the components implemented on the board. In electrical products, the more complexity the circuit attains, the larger the number of components implemented on the board. The assessment of environmental load through manual labor is time consuming and cumbersome if it has be to be done with respect to a large number of components at the time of manufacturing.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for environmental load assessment that achieves automatic and speedy assessment of the environmental load of a circuit board having implemented components.